24th ilb
5 – 14 Sep 2024 Program
9 – 18 Sep 2024 Young Program

ilb Jahre: 2003

Rüdiger Safranski

Rüdiger Safranski was born in Rottweil, Germany in 1945. He studied Philosophy, German and History in Frankfurt am Main and Berlin. He worked as editor and co-publisher of the “Berliner Hefte” from 1977-81. He gained recognition chiefly through his biographies of Schopenhauer, Heidegger and Nietzsche. On the anniversary of Schiller’s

Romesh Gunesekera

Romesh Gunesekera was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1954, where he also spent his early childhood.  He grew up bilingual speaking English and Singhalese, the official language of Sri Lanka. His family moved from Sri Lanka to the Philippines before settling in London in 1972.  Gunesekera studied English Literature

Roberto Piumini

Roberto Piumini was born in Edolo, near Brescia, Italy in 1947 and is considered the most important contemporary Italian author for children and young adults. He studied Education and then worked for a few years as a teacher, actor and puppeteer, before he found his way into writing. In the

Richard Herzinger

Reinhard Herzinger was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1955. He has a Ph.D. in Literature and has been an editor of the newspaper ‘Welt am Sonntag’, dealing particularly with foreign policy, since 2005. Before, he was political editor of the newspaper ‘Die Zeit’. He has written numerous essays on

Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner was born Lowrin, in the Banat region, in 1952. He studied Romanian and German language and literature in Temeswar and worked as a German teacher and later as a journalist, in Transylvania – for the weekly »Karpatenrundschau« among others. He was a founding member of the »Aktionsgruppe Banat«,

Remco Campert

Remco Campert was born in The Hague, Netherlands, in 1929. He is the son of the journalist and poet Jan Campert, who was murdered in 1943 in the Neuengamme concentration camp. His mother was the actress Joekie Broedelet. Remco Campert started to write poetry at an early age and published

Reinhard Hesse

born in 1956 and grew up in Cairo as the son of German parents. After university he worked as a reporter for many years, including in Beirut, Cairo, Bonn, Paris and the USA.  Hesse lived in Berlin, Munich and Beirut.  He was writing speeches for Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and political essays

Reinhard Jirgl

Reinhard Jirgl was born in East Berlin in 1953.  He was raised by his grandparents in the Altmark. In 1964, at age 11, he returned to his parents in Berlin.  After being trained as an electrician, he started studying electronics in 1971 at Berlin’s Humboldt University.  In 1975 he concluded

Raymond Federman

Raymond Federman is internationally considered one of the most influential representatives of postmodern literature.  The French-American writer and literature scholar of Jewish descent was born in 1928 in Paris.  However, he dated his “real” date of birth as July 16, 1942, the day when more than 12,000 people were arrested

Peter Schneider

Peter Schneider was born in Lübeck in 1940 and grew up in Freiburg, where he began his studies in German language, history and philosophy. He completed his education in Berlin. He wrote speeches for SPD politicians during the Bundestag election campaign in 1965. Schneider quickly found a role as one

Paulo Lins

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1958 and grew up in Brazil’s most notorious favela, known to its residents as Cidade de Deus, the City of God. The writer, anthropologist and teacher used his personal experiences as the basis of his 1997 novel ‘Cidade de Deus’. The book, which he worked

Paul Ginsborg

Paul Ginsborg was born in London in 1945.  He was a professor at Churchill College, Cambridge, and now holds a professorship for European history at the University of Florence.  He is co-founder of the protest movement Laboratorio per la democrazia. © international literature festival berlin